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A Pop Tart foretells the shape of things to come

It is now quite apparent that the animating philosophy of the nation’s governing elite is largely derived from the Wizard of Oz. At least, much of our social and economic policy is demonstrably based on wishful thinking.

Trouble is—unlike most second graders—the folks who run the country haven’t yet figured out that clicking the heels of your little red shoes doesn’t make your wishes come true.

The case of seven-year-old Josh Welch, who was suspended from his Maryland school for two days for allegedly gnawing a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun, provides us with a graphic example of social policy at its most idiotic.

Not merely content with suspending the child for something little boys have done on a daily basis with no discernible ill effects since the dawn of history—namely gnawing their food into odd shapes— the school authorities circulated parents offering counseling to children traumatized by the incident.

Clearly, children capable of being traumatized by a gnawed piece of pastry would be in desperate need of counseling—but not because of the threat posed by a Pop-Tart pistol, or even one chewed into the shape of a howitzer or intercontinental ballistic missile.

The counseling would be necessary to eradicate the irrational fears implanted in their youthful minds by the aspiring social engineers in the state’s Department of Education.

What sort of world do these folks inhabit, one asks? Certainly not the one in which most of us live.

You don’t necessarily need to agree with the notion that all guns are bad to understand that many people feel that way, including Maryland’s education Solons. But is banning the gnawing of foodstuffs into the shape of weapons an effective way to discourage boys from being fascinated with the things?

Mothers throughout history have generally disliked seeing their sons play with war-like toys. But until recently at least most realized that forbidding them to do so was a sure fire way of peaking their interest in weapons.

In England, when my friends and I were in grade school, cap pistols were by far our favorite toys and cowboys and Indians our favorite pastime.

The schoolyard was generally littered with the extravagantly contorted “bodies” of those done to death during the daily lunch break shootouts. (The “dead” came back to life on counting to 50).

Later we acquired saloon pistols, air guns, .22 rifles and .410 shotguns, and some of us took to hunting rabbits and pigeons to augment our families’ post–World War II meat rations.

I am happy to report that none of us became mass murderers— merely doctors, dentists, policemen, fire fighters, railroad men, truck drivers, builders and, oh yes, ministers, priests, and at least one rabbi.

The situation was much the same, too, in the United States, I’ll warrant, although things were not so tight food-wise after World War II as they were in Britain.

Back then, in those rather more rational days, parents responded to their children’s interest in firearms by teaching them how to handle guns and ammunition safely. We were taught that there was a world of difference between a toy and the real thing.

Toys were made for play, but real guns were tools to be used solely for target shooting or hunting. They were always to be treated as if they were loaded, and above all—loaded or unloaded—they were never to be pointed at anyone.

To emphasize the point, a piece of doggerel was dinned into our heads: “Never, never let your gun pointed be at any one, for the pheasants ever bred will not bring back one man dead … “.

The episode of Josh and the Pop Tart indicates that something is going seriously awry not just with our education system, but with our society as a whole.

Instead of dealing honestly and straightforwardly with controversial issues, the political establishment is increasingly resorting to propaganda and aversion therapy to coerce the public into submitting to a utopian, politically correct orthodoxy—witness the campaigns against fast food and regular soda.

Some—but by no means all—of the goals are laudable enough. It is manipulative and coercive methods that are not.

Such methods were once primarily the preserve of totalitarian societies such as those of the late, but unlamented, Soviet bloc. There, school children were routinely manipulated into betraying parents engaged in politically suspect activities.

On their first day of school, children in communist East Germany, for instance, were ordered to draw a picture of the television clock that was aired between programs. If the clock faces they drew were round rather than square, the secret police would conclude their parents were illicitly watching West German TV—a serious offense.

Certainly, things haven’t yet sunk to that level here in the U.S. But the Pop Tart episode indicates that the machinery is there and that there are people among us who will not shrink from using it. GPH✠

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